In memoriam

Claude Lévi-Strauss has died, a few weeks short of age 101.

I admire Lévi-Strauss because he led a transatlantic life. He did anthropologic field work and teaching in Brazil, and subsequently taught in the United States.

I also admire Lévi-Strauss because he was a superb writer.

His most well-known and most accessible work is Tristes Tropiques. English translations usually keep the French title, which literally means “sad tropics”; one English edition entitled it “World on the Wane”, which captured the work’s spirit or feeling.

Tristes Tropiques is accessible because it need not be read cover-to-cover. The casual reader will find selected chapters worthwhile, or can put the book down, then resume it later. It’s also accessible because its prose is beautiful to read, although its structure and the ideas Lévi-Strauss expresses are intricate and complex. For those who are short on time or attention span, I’d recommend the first three chapters, which have enough content to inspire a full and stimulating college or executive education class.

I’ve read and recommend another book by Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage. The book’s title is usually translated in English as “The Savage Mind”, but the French is a pun: it also means “The Wild Pansy”. To drive the point home, French editions show the flower on the book cover. It’s a typically French work, heavy on theory, in this case structuralism.

Levi-Strauss’ death has been widely reported in France. He was arguably the last well-known French intellectual. There are others, especially in biology or physics, who are prominent but not familiar to the reading public.